Unfortunately we managed to include two “null pointer exception” cases in 1.4.6, and we feel they should be patched.
This release is compatible with 1.4.6 and has almost no bytecode changes, so mods that have been updated for 1.4.6 should work in 1.4.7 too. The only affected file is the one called “qz”, which is the arrow projectile’s class. This also means that 1.4.6 clients can play on 1.4.7 servers, and 1.4.7 clients on 1.4.6 servers… so we’ll wait until after New Year’s Eve before we publish it in the launcher. Download the pre-release if you want these problems fixed before then!
The fixes are:

Fixed crash related to arrows fired from dispensers

Fixed a multiplayer crash when using fireworks without a fireworks star

This is great. The nether has always seemed fairly barren apart from Glowstone, but gaining a new ore will give us more incentive to mine it. Probably means a nether reset eventually (now we understand more about save files we could keep Nether Spawn).

This is the start of the new texture pack system. Each item will have a separate file for its texture, rather than using a single file for all textures for all items. This enables textures to have multiple images and be animated. It also will allow texture packs to be incomplete as the default texture file will be used to fill the gaps.